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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
noma. He was at Monterey when John Marshall discovered
gold in Sutter’s mill-race. One of the streets in San Francisco
is named after him.”
“I know it,” Billy put in. “Whitney Street. It’s near Russian
Hill. Saxon’s mother walked across the Plains.”
“And Billy’s grandfather and grandmother were massacred
by the Indians,” Saxon contributed. “His father was a little
baby boy, and lived with the Indians, until captured by the
whites. He didn’t even know his name and was adopted by
a Mr. Roberts.”
“Why, you two dear children, we’re almost like relatives,”
Mrs. Mortimer beamed. “It’s a breath of old times, alas! all
forgotten in these fl y-away days. I am especially interested,
because I’ve catalogued and read everything covering those
times. You – ” she indicated Billy, “you are historical, or at
least your father is. I remember about him. The whole thing
is in Bancroft’s History. It was the Modoc Indians. There were
eighteen wagons. Your father was the only survivor, a mere
baby at the time, with no knowledge of what happened. He
was adopted by the leader of the whites.”
“That’s right,” said Billy. “It was the Modocs. His train must
have ben bound for Oregon. It was all wiped out. I wonder if
you know anything about Saxon’s mother. She used to write
poetry in the early days.”
“Was any of it printed?”
“Yes,” Saxon answered. “In the old San Jose papers.”
“And do you know any of it?”
“Yes, there’s one beginning:
411
JACK LONDON
“‘Sweet as the wind-lute’s airy strains Your gentle muse has
learned to sing, And California’s boundless plains Prolong the
soft notes echoing.’”
“It sounds familiar,” Mrs. Mortimer said, pondering.
“And there was another I remember that began:
“‘I’ve stolen away from the crowd in the groves, Where the
nude statues stand, and the leaves point and shiver,’ –
“And it run on like that. I don’t understand it all. It was
written to my father – ”
“A love poem!” Mrs. Mortimer broke in. “I remember it.
Wait a minute.... Da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da –
STANDS –
“‘In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts Tremble
lightly a moment on bosom and hands, Then drip in their basin from bosom and wrists.’
“I’ve never forgotten the drip of the seed-amethysts, though
I don’t remember your mother’s name.”
“It was Daisy – ” Saxon began.
“No; Dayelle,” Mrs. Mortimer corrected with quickening
recollection.
“Oh, but nobody called her that.”
“But she signed it that way. What is the rest?”
“Daisy Wiley Brown.”
Mrs. Mortimer went to the bookshelves and quickly returned with a large, soberly-bound volume.
“It’s ‘The Story of the Files,’” she explained. “Among other
things, all the good fugitive verse was gathered here from the
old newspaper fi les.” Her eyes running down the index suddenly stopped. “I was right. Dayelle Wiley Brown. There it is.
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
Ten of her poems, too: ‘The Viking’s Quest’; ‘Days of Gold’;
‘Constancy’; ‘The Caballero’; ‘Graves at Little Meadow’ – ”
“We fought off the Indians there,” Saxon interrupted in her
excitement. “And mother, who was only a little girl, went out
and got water for the wounded. And the Indians wouldn’t shoot
at her. Everybody said it was a miracle.” She sprang out of Billy’s
arms, reaching for the book and crying: “Oh, let me see it! Let me
see it! It’s all new to me. I don’t know these poems. Can I copy
them? I’ll learn them by heart. Just to think, my mother’s!”
Mrs. Mortimer’s glasses required repolishing; and for half an
hour she and Billy remained silent while Saxon devoured her
mother’s lines. At the end, staring at the book which she had
closed on her fi nger, she could only repeat in wondering awe:
“And I never knew, I never knew.”
But during that half hour Mrs. Mortimer’s mind had not
been idle. A little later, she broached her plan. She believed in
intensive dairying as well as intensive farming, and intended,
as soon as the lease expired, to establish a Jersey dairy on the
other ten acres. This, like everything she had done, would be
model, and it meant that she would require more help. Billy
and Saxon were just the two. By next summer she could have
them installed in the cottage she intended building. In the
meantime she could arrange, one way and another, to get work
for Billy through the winter. She would guarantee this work,
and she knew a small house they could rent just at the end
of the car-line. Under her supervision Billy could take charge
from the very beginning of the building. In this way they
would be earning money, preparing themselves for independent farming life, and have opportunity to look about them.
413
JACK LONDON
But her persuasions were in vain. In the end Saxon succinctly epitomized their point of view.
“We can’t stop at the fi rst place, even if it is as beautiful
and kind as yours and as nice as this valley is. We don’t even
know what we want. We’ve got to go farther, and see all kinds
of places and all kinds of ways, in order to fi nd out. We’re not
in a hurry to make up our minds. We want to make, oh, so
very sure! And besides....” She hesitated. “Besides, we don’t like
altogether fl at land. Billy wants some hills in his. And so do I.”
When they were ready to leave Mrs. Mortimer offered to
present Saxon with “The Story of the Files”; but Saxon shook
her head and got some money from Billy.
“It says it costs two dollars,” she said. “Will you buy me one,
and keep it till we get settled? Then I’ll write, and you can send
it to me.”
“Oh, you Americans,” Mrs. Mortimer chided, accepting the
money. “But you must promise to write from time to time before you’re settled.”
She saw them to the county road.
“You are brave young things,” she said at parting. “I only
wish I were going with you, my pack upon my back. You’re
perfectly glorious, the pair of you. If ever I can do anything
for you, just let me know. You’re bound to succeed, and I want
a hand in it myself. Let me know how that government land
turns out, though I warn you I haven’t much faith in its feasibility. It’s sure to be too far away from markets.”
She shook hands with Billy. Saxon she caught into her
arms and kissed.
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
“Be brave,” she said, with low earnestness, in Saxon’s ear.
“You’ll win. You are starting with the right ideas. And you
were right not to accept my proposition. But remember, it,
or better, will always be open to you. You’re young yet, both
of you. Don’t be in a hurry. Any time you stop anywhere for
a while, let me know, and I’ll mail you heaps of agricultural reports and farm publications. Good-bye. Heaps and heaps and
heaps of luck.”
CHAPTER IV
Billy sat motionless on the edge of the bed in their little
room in San Jose that night, a musing expression in his eyes.
“Well,” he remarked at last, with a long-drawn breath, “all
I’ve got to say is there’s some pretty nice people in this world
after all. Take Mrs. Mortimer. Now she’s the real goods – regular old American.”
“A fi ne, educated lady,” Saxon agreed, “and not a bit
ashamed to work at farming herself. And she made it go, too.”
“On twenty acres – no, ten; and paid for ‘em, an’ all improvements, an’ supported herself, four hired men, a Swede woman
an’ daughter, a n’ her own nephew. It gets me. Ten acres! Why,
my father never talked less’n one hundred an’ sixty acres. Even
your brother Tom still talks in quarter sections. – An’ she was
only a woman, too. We was lucky in meetin’ her.”
“Wasn’t it an adventure!” Saxon cried. “That’s what comes
of traveling. You never know what’s going to happen next. It
jumped right out at us, just when we were tired and wondering how much farther to San Jose. We weren’t expecting it at
all. And she didn’t treat us as if we were tramping. And that
house – so clean and beautiful. You could eat off the fl oor.
I never dreamed of anything so sweet and lovely as the inside
of that house.”
“It smelt good,” Billy supplied.
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
“That’s the very thing. It’s what the women’s pages call atmosphere. I didn’t know what they meant before. That house
has beautiful, sweet atmosphere – ”
“Like all your nice underthings,” said Billy.
“And that’s the next step after keeping your body sweet
and clean and beautiful. It’s to have your house sweet and
clean and beautiful.”
“But it can’t be a rented one, Saxon. You’ve got to own
it. Landlords don’t build houses like that. Just the same, one
thing stuck out plain: that house was not expensive. It wasn’t
the cost. It was the way. The wood was ordinary wood you
can buy in any lumber yard. Why, our house on Pine street
was made out of the same kind of wood. But the way it was
made was different. I can’t explain, but you can see what I’m
drivin’ at.”
Saxon, revisioning the little bungalow they had just left,
repeated absently: “That’s it – the way.”
The next morning they were early afoot, seeking through
the suburbs of San Jose the road to San Juan and Monterey.
Saxon’s limp had increased. Beginning with a burst blister, her
heel was skinning rapidly. Billy remembered his father’s talks
about care of the feet, and stopped at a butcher shop to buy
fi ve cents’ worth of mutton tallow.
“That’s the stuff,” he told Saxon. “Clean foot-gear and the
feet well greased. We’ll put some on as soon as we’re clear of
town. An’ we might as well go easy for a couple of days. Now, if
I could get a little work so as you could rest up several days it’d
be just the thing. I ‘ll keep my eye peeled.”
417
JACK LONDON
Almost on the outskirts of town he left Saxon on the county road and went up a long driveway to what appeared a large
farm. He came back beaming.
“It’s all hunkydory,” he called as he approached. “We’ll just
go down to that clump of trees by the creek an’ pitch camp.
I start work in the mornin’, two dollars a day an’ board myself.
It’d been a dollar an’ a half if he furnished the board. I told ‘m
I liked the other way best, an’ that I had my camp with me. The
weather’s fi ne, an’ we can make out a few days till your foot’s in
shape. Come on. We’ll pitch a regular, decent camp.”
“How did you get the job,” Saxon asked, as they cast about,
determining their camp-site.
“Wait till we get fi xed an’ I’ll tell you all about it. It was
a dream, a cinch.”
Not until the bed was spread, the fi re built, and a pot of
beans boiling did Billy throw down the last armful of wood
and begin.
“In the fi rst place, Benson’s no old-fashioned geezer. You
wouldn’t think he was a farmer to look at ‘m. He’s up to date,
sharp as tacks, talks an’ acts like a business man. I could see
that, just by lookin’ at his place, before I seen HIM. He took
about fi fteen seconds to size me up.
“‘Can you plow?’ says he.
“‘Sure thing,’ I told ‘m.
“‘Know horses?’
“‘I was hatched in a box-stall,’ says I.
“An’ just then – you remember that four-horse load of machinery that come in after me? – just then it drove up.
“‘How about four horses?’ he asks, casual-like.
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THE VALLEY OF THE MOON
“‘Right to home. I can drive ‘m to a plow, a sewin’ machine,
or a merry-go-round.’
“‘Jump up an’ take them lines, then,’ he says, quick an’
sharp, not wastin’ seconds. ‘See that shed. Go ‘round the barn
to the right an’ back in for unloadin’.’
“An’ right here I wanta tell you it was some nifty drivin’
he was askin’. I could see by the tracks the wagons’d all ben
goin’ around the barn to the left. What he was askin’ was too
close work for comfort – a double turn, like an S, between
a corner of a paddock an’ around the corner of the barn to
the last swing. An’, to eat into the little room there was, there
was piles of manure just thrown outa the barn an’ not hauled
away yet. But I wasn’t lettin’ on nothin’. The driver gave me
the lines, an’ I could see he was grinnin’, sure I’d make a mess
of it. I bet he couldn’t a-done it himself. I never let on, an
away we went, me not even knowin’ the horses – but, say,
if you’d seen me throw them leaders clean to the top of the
manure till the nigh horse was scrapin’ the side of the barn to
make it, an’ the off hind hub was cuttin’ the corner post of the
paddock to miss by six inches. It was the only way. An’ them
horses was sure beauts. The leaders slacked back an’ darn near
sat down on their singletrees when I threw the back into the
wheelers an’ slammed on the brake an’ stopped on the very
precise spot.
“‘You’ll do,’ Benson says. ‘That was good work.’
“‘Aw, shucks,’ I says, indifferent as hell. ‘Gimme something
real hard.’
“He smiles an’ understands.
419
JACK LONDON
“‘You done that well,’ he says. ‘An’ I’m particular about who
handles my horses. The road ain’t no place for you. You must
be a good man gone wrong. Just the same you can plow with
my horses, startin’ in to-morrow mornin’.’
“Which shows how wise he wasn’t. I hadn’t showed I could
plow.”
When Saxon had served the beans, and Billy the coffee,
she stood still a moment and surveyed the spread meal on the
blankets – the canister of sugar, the condensed milk tin, the
sliced corned beef, the lettuce salad and sliced tomatoes, the
slices of fresh French bread, and the steaming plates of beans
and mugs of coffee.
“What a difference from last night!” Saxon exclaimed, clapping her hands. “It’s like an adventure out of a book. Oh, that
boy I went fi shing with! Think of that beautiful table and that
beautiful house last night, and then look at this. Why, we could
have lived a thousand years on end in Oakland and never met
a woman like Mrs. Mortimer nor dreamed a house like hers
existed. And, Billy, just to think, we’ve only just started.”
Billy worked for three days, and while insisting that he
was doing very well, he freely admitted that there was more in
plowing than he had thought. Saxon experienced quiet satisfaction when she learned he was enjoying it.
“I never thought I’d like plowin’ – much,” he observed.
“But it’s fi ne. It’s good for the leg-muscles, too. They don’t get
exercise enough in teamin’. If ever I trained for another fi ght,
you bet I’d take a whack at plowin’. An’, you know, the ground
has a regular good smell to it, a-turnin’ over an’ turnin’ over.
Gosh, it’s good enough to eat, that smell. An’ it just goes on,
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